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Hip Hop Resistance in Gaza
By Jordan Flaherty
June 5, 2009
The Maqusi Towers
in Gaza City look a bit like US housing projects. The
neighborhood consists of several tall apartment
buildings grouped together in the northern part of town.
It is also ground zero for Gaza's growing Hip-Hop
community. On a recent evening in one small but
well-decorated apartment, a dozen rappers and their
friends and families relaxed, danced, smoked flavored
tobacco, and rapped the lyrics to some of their songs.
The occasion was a
post-show celebration of the taping of Hip Hop Kom, an
American Idol-type talent competition for Palestinian
rappers. Fifteen acts from across Palestine performed on
Thursday night, and the show was broadcast
simultaneously in Gaza City and the West Bank city of
Ramallah. Through the use of video conferencing and
projection, each city could see and hear the
performances happening in the other. Five groups from
Gaza participated, and Gazawians came in first, third,
and fourth place.
The Gaza City show
was held in a small theatre in the Palestine Red
Crescent building. Although only publicized by word of
mouth, nearly 200 young people filled the
theatre, loudly cheering for the rappers and breakdance
crew who took the stage.
One of the
organizers of the contest, a charismatic literature
major named Ayman Meghames, is a minor
celebrity here. Part of Gaza's first Hip-Hop
group—named PR: Palestinian Rapperz—Ayman dedicates his
time to supporting and publicizing Gaza's young music
scene.
Armed with a ready
smile, Ayman was seemingly everywhere at once that
night. He was on stage introducing the acts, helping
with technical difficulties, greeting friends, and
coordinating with the West Bank organizers.
For Ayman, making
music is a form of resistance to war and occupation, and
also a tool to communicate the reality of life in
Palestine. "Most of our lyrics are about the
occupation," he tells me. "Lately we've also started
singing about the conflict between Hamas and Fatah. Any
problem, it needs to be written about." Rapper Chuck D,
from the group Public Enemy, once called rap music the
CNN for Black America. For Ayman and his friends, music
is their weapon to break media silence. "Most of the
world believes we are the terrorists," he says. "And the
media is closed to us, so we get our message out through
Hip-Hop."
One of the first
acts to take the stage was a duo called Black Unit Band.
Mohammed Wafy, one of the two singers, displays the
innocent charm of a teen pop star as he jumps from the
stage and into the audience. Tall and skinny with a
shock of black hair, Mohammed is 18 and looks younger.
Khaled Harara, the other singer (and Mohammed's next
door neighbor) is a few years older and several pounds
heavier, but no less energetic on stage.
As the evening
progressed, the energy in the room continued to rise.
The next act featured six members from two combined
groups (DA MCs, and RG, for Revolutionary Guys) now
collectively called DARG Team. The crowd was up on their
feet, many of them singing along as the performers
displayed a range of lyrical stylings.
In Mohammed Wafy's
apartment, the performers waited anxiously for the
results of the contest. The call came in on Ayman's cell
phone. Putting it on speaker, everyone listened as the
results were announced: DARG team had come in first
place, and Black Unit had placed third. There were no
hurt feelings apparent for those that didn't win - for
these young performers, every victory is a
shared victory. DARG members will now go on to Denmark
to produce an album (if they can get out of Gaza).
Fadi Bakhet, a
studious and slightly preppy looking Afro-Palestinian in
wire -rimmed glasses, is DARG's manager, and also the
brother of one of the members. As the night
continued, the gathering moved to his apartment. They
celebrated the successful show, which also fell on the
last day of exams for many students, and the laughing
and conversation continued late into the night. The next
day was hot and sunny, and thousands of Gazawians
gathered on the beach to swim and relax by the
Mediterranean.
These stories may
seem incongruent with much of the international
reporting about Gaza and the Hamas government. But it is
exactly for this reason that they should be told.
If you follow the
reporting on Palestine in the US media, you may imagine
a fundamentalist state. Hamas-stan, as at least one
Israeli commentator has called it. You may imagine a
nation of terrorists, where women are oppressed and men
launch rockets. But perhaps when we learn that
Palestinian families swim on Friday afternoons, that
they study literature in the day and rap about
imprisoned friends at night, we can rethink the US'
unquestioning support for Israeli aggression against
this almost entirely defenseless population.
Yesterday, I visited a journalism
class at the Islamic University, taught by Rami
Almeghari. The students had many questions, but one
young woman's words in particular stayed with me. "What
can we do to reach people in America and tell them how
things really are here," she asked. "How can we get them
to listen, and to see?"
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans,
and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first
writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national
audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans
shared a journalism award from New America Media. His
work has been published and broadcast in outlets
including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina),
Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now. He is currently
traveling in Gaza with a delegation of journalists,
organizers and human rights workers from the US south.
He can be reached at
neworleans@leftturn.org.
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Life in Gaza
As President Obama visits Cairo,
Gaza Remains Devastated
By Jordan Flaherty
More than four months after
Gaza was devastated by a massive Israeli military bombardment,
rebuilding has been slow to come. The problem is not a lack of
funding or will. However, an Israeli-led blockade has kept all
rebuilding materials, including concrete or any tools that could be
used to rebuild the hundreds of homes and buildings here, out of
Gaza. The border entries, controlled by the Israeli and Egyptian
governments, are sealed to almost all traffic.
There is an intense desire here
to rebuild. There is no shortage of skilled labor. Billions of
dollars of aid from countries around the world, including the US,
has been pledged. But scarcely a single house has been rebuilt. From
the Rafah border in the south to the town of Beit Hanoun in the
north, people are still living in tents, or with family members, or
in shelters.
The range of destruction is
breathtaking. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in 22 days,
the vast majority civilians, including more than 300 children.
Schools, health clinics, houses, and, most importantly, the basic
infrastructure of both public services and government has been
destroyed. Rubble is everywhere. Basic government structures, such
as the building that houses the Palestinian parliament are all
destroyed.
Two days ago, a delegation 66
activists, scholars, journalists and human rights workers, mostly
from the US, visited the Parliament building. The visit was
organized by the peace group Code Pink, which has led several
delegations attempting to break the blockade. The group was
surprised to find the building housing the legislature reduced
partly to rubble, and Parliament members forced to meet in a tent
outside. Having no building to meet in is just one of the many
problems facing the elected government of the Palestinian people.
"Not only are more than 11,000 prisoners in Israeli jails,"
explained Dr. Ahmed Bahar, the acting speaker of the Palestinian
legislative council, and part of the Hamas political party. "Forty
members of the legislative council are imprisoned, including the
head of the legislature. Can you imagine if the head of the
legislature, of anywhere else in the world, were held in prison by a
foreign government?" Dr. Bahar appealed to the US activists
assembled for help in breaking the siege. "They don't allow basic
construction material to enter," he said. "Cement, glass, wood,
steel."
Gaza is among the most densely
populated places on earth. One and a half million people live in 139
square miles, and it has been described as the world's largest
prison. Traveling across this very small area, you meet people
everywhere who just want to live a normal life, but are being
prevented by a cruel blockade from going anywhere or doing anything.
"The biggest lie that has been
told is that Gaza is a hostile entity," declares John Ging, the head
of the United Nation's Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip.
"Its populated by well educated, decent people. They're not spitting
hatred. Theyre asking for help, theyre asking for justice, theyre
asking for the rule of law." An Irish former soldier with a staff of
10,000, Ging is a UN bureaucrat, not an activist, but his respect
for the international law has made him a passionate spokesperson for
a rebuilding of Gaza.
Under the current seige,
explains, Ging, "Theres no cement, even if its to repair a hospital
or school or health center. So people are being kept alive, nothing
more." Its been said in the US media that the situation in Gaza is
complicated, that the seige is part of a defense against terrorism,
but Ging denies these claims. "When it comes down to it, its rather
simple whats needed," he says. "What we now need to focus on is
creating a life for people here. We need to see the depoliticization
of assisstance. What we have here in gaza is a failure to uphold
those basic human rights."
Gaza is currently currently
hosting several delegations of international human rights observers
and activists from the US and Europe. With each month, more people
come here, and see the painful reality of the situation here. And
with each new arrival, the seige perhaps moves a step closer to
ending.
President Obama is scheduled to
be in Cairo tomorrow, and members of Code Pink plan to ask him to
visit Gaza. Tens of thousands of people from the US have signed a
petition asking him to see the devastation. Across Gaza, people are
looking for some sign that the new president will stand up for human
rights in Palestine. "We ask Obama not to close his eyes to the
Palestinian catastrophe," says Dr. Bahar. "We are running out of
time," says John Ging. "We need to move from keeping people alive to
giving them a life."
Jordan
Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left
Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the
Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina
New Orleans shared a journalism award from New America Media. His
work has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit
(in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and
Democracy Now. He is currently traveling in Gaza with a delegation
of journalists, organizers and human rights workers from the US
south. He can be reached at
neworleans@leftturn.org.
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Other Responses
Below
is a memorable chunk of the speech President Obama delivered in
Cairo to the Muslim World. I found Mr. Obama's expression, "Violence
is a dead en." rather rich in that he heads a country which is the
greatest purveyor of violence on the globe. Second, there is the
studied model of Martin Luther King's SCLC Movement as the whole of
the civil rights movement. Obama stumbles into that abyss. To
include South Africa in this ideological view on the uses of
violence is to disremember Nelson Mandela and the ANC. We find
Barack personally a good man who means well, but the latter has
little to do with the outcome of actual American policies. Third
there's the eternal bond between the United States and Israel. It
seems as if Israel should become the 51st and Palestine the 52nd for
balance.—Rudy
“Violence is a dead end.”—(from Obama’s Speech in Cairo)—For
peace to come, it is time for them—and all of us—to live up to our
responsibilities. Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance
through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For
centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as
slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence
that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined
insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This
same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia;
from Eastern Europe to Indonesia.
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It's a story with a simple truth:
that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither
courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children,
or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral
authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
Now is the time for Palestinians to
focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority
must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions
that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have
support among some Palestinians, but they also have
responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling
Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian
people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize
past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist. |
At the same time, Israelis must
acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied,
neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the
legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction
violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve
peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.
Israel must also live up to its
obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and
develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian
families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve
Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity
in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian
people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take
concrete steps to enable such progress.
NYTimes
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update 3 May
2011
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